iOS devices already offers impressive battery life, but it is still necessary to follow some simple steps to get more additional hours out of these gadgets. The iOS 7 was introduced along with the iPhone 5 in 2012 and it is possible for users to get even more impressive battery life on these devices.

The iOS 7 is a well-optimized software platform, but with improper uses, device owners could suffer from horrible battery life. Of course, there’s no guarantee that any of these tips would work for all iOS fans, but they should be applicable for “borderline power users”. Meaning, although they are constantly on their phone, they don’t play a lot of resource-hungry games. Much of the smartphone uses should be related to managing email, browsing the web, talking to someone and other similar things. Here are things iOS 7.0 users should do to add a few more hours on their battery life:

1. Disable push off email: For many users, disabling push off email could actually be helpful. Their phone will no longer ring or buzz. The iPhone could take a hit in its battery life when constantly pulling new email messages for us. Some users receive more than a hundred new email messages each day and this could start eat at their battery. When disabled, users can check email at their own leisure and without the unnecessary annoyances. However, we could also choose a compromise, by widening the intervals; so the phone will check for new emails every 30 minutes, instead of every 5 minutes. We can change the intervals by going to the Mail, Contact, Calendars menu in the Settings and choose Fetch New Data. Checking new email messages less frequently is good for our sanity and it would also lengthen out phone’s battery life.
2. Reduce screen brightness: This is one thing that we should permanently change. Instead of pushing the brightness level all the way up, users could still find it manageable to move the slider to about 40 percent of the maximum level. Even in darker areas, it is still possible to see things clearly on the iPhone with the lowest brightness level. The display of iPhone 5 eats up power the most and we could minimize drain by setting the brightness low. Making the display brighter can easily be performed by pulling up the phone’s Control Center. But in many cases, we can’t really rely too much on the Auto feature. We will be much better off by simply configuring the brightness settings to the lower level.
3. Disable 4G LTE connectivity: 4G LTE delivers much better usability compared to the standard 3G connection, but it could quickly eat away at our phone’s battery life. Although, the drain may not be as bad as on many Android devices, we should consider whether we really need 4G connections. Simple web browsing and email checking can be performed under 3G connection. Enable the faster data speed only when we need to download large apps and watch online videos. The situation could get worse when people live in fringe areas, where their phones constantly bounce between HSPA+ and 4G LTE connections. This would drain battery life faster, because the phone needs to switch between different networks. Users could disable or enable the 4G LTE by going to Settings> Cellular> Enable LTE.  
4. Enable Airplane mode frequently: There are times when battery life is very precious, especially during long trips. The iPhone could be important for navigation purposes and to help us during emergency situations. Often, our iPhone’s battery life dips under 20 percent and this situation, we should consider enabling the Airplane Mode to keep the phone alive a bit longer. If we are not expecting calls or don’t need Internet connection, the feature would save us a ton of battery life. Any service that hampers battery life will be disabled and we could disable Airplane Mode when we need to call someone. Flipping on Airplane Mode is easy, we can open the Control Center by swiping up the bottom of the display and touch the airplane icon. This should stop all emails, texts and calls until we tap on the icon once again.
5. Disable location services and notifications: Enabling location services and notifications all day won’t help up conserve battery life. It is a good idea to disable any kind of push notifications. The screen won’t need to light up each time there’s a notification-pop up. To disable notifications, we could go to Settings> Notification Center>Tap on App and then choose “Show on Lock Screen”. This way, important notification will be displayed; the phone will alert or buzz us with a sound instead of turning on the whole display. When the iPhone is in use, the notification will still appear on the screen. It is advisable to minimize the location services provided by iOS 7 to a minimum. Location services could also silently drain battery life and by disabling it, we could improve the battery life of iOS device a little bit longer. Turn off this feature by going to Settings> Privacy> Location Services and specify apps that shouldn’t use the location info. It is possible to disable this feature entirely, but do this only when it is not necessary to use maps or integrate location information with photographs taken.
6. Disable Background App Refresh: It is one of the niftiest features provided by the iOS 7 and when enabled, it makes sure that we get the latest data when an application is opened. This should be useful when we constantly check Facebook for updates. In an effort to improve battery life, it is usually necessary to disable this feature as well. We could head to Settings> General> Background App Refresh and choose whether we should disable it for specific apps or disable the feature completely. Although apps won’t update themselves in the background, this should be an acceptable price to pay if we really need to improve the battery life of our iOS 7 devices.
7. Remove recently installed apps: If steps provided above fail to improve battery life, we may need to blame specific 3^rd party apps for the unexpected battery drain. It could be difficult to pinpoint the real culprit accurately using this method, especially when we have dozens of apps installed. Uninstalling a single app, monitoring the rate of battery usage and repeating the process with another app could be rather time-consuming and tedious. However, finding the troublesome app would be much easier to do if the battery drain issue is relatively recent.
8. Restart the device: After using our iOS 7 devices for the day, we may have opened dozen of apps and some of them could still run in the background. We could see good results with battery life by turning off the device at night, recharge it and turn it back on at morning. This step should be very simple to do, since we only need to press down the power button.
9. Reset device settings: Some curious users may have toggled some of the device’s setting and this could contribute to the overall disappointing battery life. It’s a good thing to know that we could easily reset the settings of our devices without erasing our apps, contacts, photos and data. The setting will be reset to default, but others will remain the same. We could do this by going to Settings> General> Reset> Reset All Settings and enter our PIN. The entire process should take only a few minutes to complete, but this could help to improve battery life.          
10. Completely restore the device: This step should be the last resort if none of the step mentioned above work. This step is also called the hard reset and other than resetting the settings, it also erases everything. This would make our iOS device feels like almost new and could also potentially remove nagging issues. Before we do this, we should sync the device to transfer photos, clips and other important data. We could perform full iCloud or iTunes backup, to ensure that none of our important data vanish. Once we back up the device, we could go to Settings> General> Reset> Erase All Contents and Settings. If you are really sure about all this, just enter the PIN to immediately start the hard reset process. Then we have a couple more options to choose, either restoring the device to the most recent backup or simply wiping everything clean.

If this still fails, then it is recommended to head to the nearest Apple Store. The battery life issue could in fact be caused by damaged battery and this would require immediate replacement.

Recommended reading: 10 Ways Android Smartphones Can Have Better Battery Life